Influence of Wi-Fi computer interfaces on RF measurement systems

Nowadays wireless low-power technologies, such as Wi-Fi^TM, ZigBee^TM, BlueTooth^TM, to cite a few, are often present in measurement environment. Even though designed and developed to reduce at minimum their emissions, however these wireless devices can potentially interfere with metrological performance of modern instrumentation. For these reasons, a careful investigation on the electromagnetic susceptibility of measurement systems, when subjected to interferences generated by short-range low-power wireless transmitters, is carried out. The effects of a Wi-Fi^TM bridge operating close to a typical radio frequency measurement station are analyzed. The achieved results prove that the effects of the interferences due to the wireless module are not always negligible, thus potentially compromising its performance and the measurement results reliability.